In prison Friday morning, sitting in silence with Buddhist group, I hear, twice, from outside room, someone say, “Monks don’t speak." Then, as things are in prison, a rarified silence temporarily visits, as Yao, Saskia, Tree, Doug, Matthew, Chris, Reed, Rokie, and I entertained the visitor.
After bowing and circling walking mindfully arriving back and bowing again, we sit ready for words. And a response to the outside-room koan spoken by patrolling koan-master arises: "monks don't speak, they are spoken through."
Later, the ping pong playfulness of dialogue moves side to side as Rokie follows blue handball from foot to foot along charcoal blankets over purple yoga mats. It is a sine-wave of perspectives rollercoastering from dammapada verses to survivalist strategies, from words written by former group member now serving time in federal prison to thoughts of anthropocene age approaching, from Jim Morrison lyric "break on through to the other side," to the humor of how to continue suffering.
If we are not long to remain here (in existence, as a human species, as particular human beings) what, someone ask, can we do now? It is suggested that, with compassion and love, as community and sangha, we can help one another to new view through death-in-life/life-in-death with grace and peace and fearlessness. And in this doula-like reverse transition, to consider and practice the possibilities of "passing on through to the other side" of which we have no evidentiary experience, except for glimpses of transformation and transcendance as fleeting as a dog's single bark heard over a wide open pasture.
There is a still and quiet shiver of sympathique that visits the zendo holding all of us as if in training to realize a new commission to be companions-interior, walkers-alongside, sitters-with, a new kind (kindness?) of counterintuitive hospice, walkers-into-life, assisting one another to see-feel touch-heal each and all we encounter toward and through the door named suffering into the open pasture of unspeaking sound in deep bow surrounding the sanctity of presence without barrier or boundary.
The shakuhachi teaches by example at end. It let's pass through what does not belong to it. Breath, temporarily diverted, released through small openings, sounding itself in a grateful gathering.
We are spoken through.
We are spoken for.
We are spoken with.
A unity of presence-silence breathing emptiness into deeper practice.
Monastics,
being,
spoken,
We are spoken through.
We are spoken for.
We are spoken with.
A unity of presence-silence breathing emptiness into deeper practice.
Monastics,
being,
spoken,
through.
